Baseball vs The Space-Time Continuum

I grew up playing baseball. I loved it. I played in little league until I wasn’t so little anymore. I played on all-star teams that (almost) went to provincial tournaments. I even bought a wooden bat in an aluminum bat era so I could hear the authentic *crack* of leather and cork connecting with heavy ash wood.

Dusty summer nights at the baseball diamond are core memories for me. One evening, I slid into 2nd base after hitting a line drive to left field and remember looking up to see my high school crush cheering from the stands. I was a Norman Rockwell painting.

Now I’m a dad. Both my young sons just started playing baseball. And I’m starting to question everything.

Is baseball a good sport? There are so many weird rules. It’s so slow. And then it’s really fast. The glacial pace of waiting for something to happen is whiplashed by a flurry of panic as a ball is hit and absolute hell breaks loose. 

It’s a game of anticipation, not action. Pass the peanuts.

“Keep your eye on the ball!” I said encouragingly to my kid who was more interested in watching the shadows the dirt made as he threw it in the air than playing shortstop. As I looked around, not one kid in the field was watching the batter. None.

The mean batting average in Major League Baseball is about .250. What?? That means three out of four times these professional batters do NOT reach base safely. Imagine what that average is when you are 7 years old. I’ll tell you: it’s less.

Well, confusingly, it’s more. Because now the little leagues have created new rules that allow batters to reach base more often in order to promote positivity. Reason is, baseball is a game based on failure. Sorry kids, life is like that sometimes.

A month or so ago, at the start of the season, I received some panicked texts from my sons’ mother who had taken them to one of their first games and seemed embarrassed by their performance:

“Please buy a bat and hit with these guys. It’s very obvious they don’t practice. This is your department.”

“His swing needs to gain speed and start earlier. Somehow it’s the opposite.”

“He struck out.”

Yeah. Sometimes you strike out. That’s baseball. 

Their mom, who never played the game, was right. The kids’ swings had room for improvement. But that’s why I signed them up for the season. I don’t expect them to have Ken Griffey’s home run swing after being up to bat a mere 5 times in their young lives. Practice makes perfect.

I could blame the pandemic for the lack of baseball practices for 2 years, but honestly, sometimes you just strike out. And it sucks. But you know what? You’ll get to go up to bat again. And that time maybe you’ll remember to keep that back elbow up. Or you’ll start your swing a little earlier.

Since batting practice is my department (which it totally is — after all, I love this sport, right??), I took the boys out for some one-on-one time with the ol’ stitched leather ball. Well, we actually hit whiffle balls, but whatever. Let’s keep some romance in the sport. 

Unmiraculously, batting practice helped. At the next game, their swings had vastly improved. Yet their concentration on the field was simply non-existent. How do I get my kids to be invested in something that seemed like second nature to me?

Why did I love baseball so much? I’m beginning to think I was fed some Kevin Costner Kool-Aid in the ‘80s and wasted my youth on the baseball diamond.

But you have to admit, this is a good scene.

Bull Durham remains one of my favourite movies. Field of Dreams is up there too. For those fans of Major League, you are welcome to it — I think A League of Their Own has more soul. Even though, in fact, there is often crying in baseball.

Wait. What did I just say? Soul? 

Is that what baseball has that singles it out from other sports? I would never say soccer has soul. It has passion. As a newly-minted basketball fan, I think the game is awesome but it’s too fast-paced to be soulful. American football has heart, but it doesn’t beat baseball in the soul department. Say what you want about curling.

There is something about the slow pace of baseball that gives it allure. In music, the spaces between the notes are just as important as the notes themselves. Without rests, music would be cacophony. 

The space between each pitch in a baseball game gives time for reflection. In fact, there is a moment in each game, the 7th inning stretch, in which the entire crowd is told to take a break. Just take a load off, everybody. We, the owners and operators of Major League Baseball, acknowledge this game takes a commitment, a dedication, to some hard-to-pinpoint spirit that has just as much to do with hot dog mustard as it does with the suicide squeeze, so let’s sing:

“Take me out to the ball game

Take me out with the crowd

Buy me some peanuts and Cracker Jack

I don’t care if I never get back…”

Never get back? Never get back to what? Work? Life?

Baseball, and its irregular pacing, is more like life than any other sport. After all, life isn’t a constant barrage of high-intensity plays that require optimal physical prowess to negotiate. Life has pauses. You have to wait for the bus. Need to make lunches for school tomorrow. Get caught in work meeting that you shouldn’t have been invited to. 

Then, suddenly, life throws you a pitch. Are you prepared?

I realize now that not only did I like playing baseball, I liked everything that went along with it. There are a few plays, a few hits, that stick out in my memory of playing the game for so long, but what I remember more is the feeling. The sounds. The conversations in the dugout. That time Danny Elliott got so mad after he struck out that he punched a metal pole, breaking his hand in the process. Like I said, striking out sucks.

When it came to baseball, I loved the hang. Still do.

Baseball is social — trust me, I went to a Blue Jays game by myself one time and sat in the nosebleeds. Lesson learned? No matter how much you like baseball, it’s better to go with someone to talk to.

Baseball is about people-watching. Sure, this goes for most sports. There is always something to look at in the stands. But what baseball gives an audience is the chance to look around without a squad of cheerleaders with T-shirt cannons coming around to distract them.

Baseball is meditative. If you’ve ever spent time playing centrefield you know this fact. You are the last line of defence. And you are way out there. Alone. You need to yell to talk to the closest person to you. A lot of thinking gets done in centrefield.

These days, we tend to fill every moment with something. If we have a second to spare, we (myself included!) reach for our ubiquitous devices and fill those moments with a quick scroll, a sound bite, a news reel we’ve already seen. Inevitably, none of them feed our soul. 

Hopefully my kids aren’t destined for a life where they simply fill moments with content just to fill the time. I guess my next department is teaching them the benefit of space. Of the rests between the notes.

Our souls need space to thrive. They need time. Our souls are deep places made beautiful when they can resonate. When they echo.

“I don’t care if I never get back…”

If life is so much like baseball, why can’t we all be patient and take the time to pay attention to the next pitch? You never know: the ball may come right to you.